Message-ID: <19990814191044.AAB8098@LOCALNAME> Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 16:14:26 +0000 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca> Subject: Re: Action against the WTO To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
http://www.pangea.org/encuentro/ponencia/ponen-36in.txtFrom:Jorge Junquero\ Tambor Transatlantico\ Radio Klara\ Spain
First of all, I must clarify that the following commentaries are made from a limited perspective: information work in the framework of the so called "north-south" relationship.
For the past ten years we have been broadcasting a radio program in Radio Klara (a "free and libertarian" station) in Valencia (Spain). Its name is "Tambor Trasatl ntico" (Trasatlantic Drum) and pretends [aspires] to inform and educate about the struggles of the people's of America, Asia and Africa.
Some of the people that participate in the program have been involved for many years (way before the sandinista "victory") in the solidarity information work with those (like ourselves) who want to put a end to the imperial forms of explotation and domination.
Informing about people who are very little known by us, despite the fact we talk a lot about them, would have to start by almost physical aproach to them and their lands. The geographycal, and economic descriptions, as well as those that depict their ways of living are fundamental if one pretends to understand anything from a less eurocentric and "superior" point of view.
I'm not talking about "exotism" but of a minimal respect towards things we ignore to a large extent. This way would allow us to avoid dangerous generalizations, simplifications and "universal truths" wich pretend to know and explain everything no matter where and in wich circumstances.
It is a very common practice to try to adapt our "information" or "counterinformation" to pre-conceived schemes and not to reality. This way one "informs" by "cheating", giving a partial and interested account according to political or/and religious tendencies, our own afinities or sympathies for concrete groups or persons and their life-styles.
In our radio-work, on the contrary we try to question our own theories and motives as well as those of others without accepting anything as a given no matter who or where it comes from. [...]